Superman Franchise Flying High On Warner Brothers Priority List!?

By: Kryptonian Detective

With no news to discuss regarding another Superman film, it seemed that Warner Brothers were content to sit on their hands with this franchise. It doesn’t help matters that outward appearances seem to suggest that the studio has ABSOLUTELY no idea what to do with the character. This complacency with the Superman franchise may have ended. A recent court decree in the Siegel family lawsuit against Warner Brothers has lit a fire under the studio. Now, I’m no legal eagle but the ruling boils down to this; If Warner Brothers does not have a Superman film in production by 2011, with a likely release date of 2012, then the Siegel family is eligible to sue the studio for some such reason that escapes my mind.

This has put another Superman installment on the fast track and the studio has a short list of who would be involved. Sources indicate that Warner Brothers are leaning towards people they’ve worked with before. This would be none other than the Wachowski Brothers. They clearly revolutionized the sci-fi genre with their Matrix trilogy, which made the studio a very sizeable amount of money, but by the same token, were responsible for the financial disaster that was the movie Speed Racer. The other name mentioned was director James McTeigue. McTeigue directed V for Vendetta, and the upcoming Ninja Assassin for the studio. As sources point out, an even more probable scenario would be that the Wachowski brothers would produce the film, while James McTeigue would direct, as was the case with V for Vendetta. That takes care of one aspect of the creative team.

The next question is, who will put pen to paper, and write the script? According to sources, that job falls into the hands of comic scribe Grant Morrison. This s no shock as an article in Variety recently reported that Warner Brothers had recently hired Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and Marv Wolfman to write script treatments for various comic book movies, before hiring traditional Hollywood scriptwriters. Now Grant Morrison recently wrote the dud of story that was Final Crisis, but he also wrote Batman: R.I.P. which was a solid read, had a good run on JLA, and wrote one of the best Superman stories, All Star Superman. Another question that can apparently be laid to rest is that, this film will not be a sequel to Superman Returns, it will be a fresh start for the Man of Steel, thereby creating a new series of films. Superman Returns will be the happy ending to the previous film series. There is no word on casting rumors as of yet, but whether it be Brandon Routh, Tom Welling, Matthew Bomer, Henry Cavill, or someone that’s never been mentioned before, it’s about time Warner Brothers pulls this franchise out of the phantom zone, and allows it to fly up, up, and away once again!